Best Tools and Software for Businesses

Your tech stack makes a huge difference to the everyday lives of your team. The right combination of tools should cut down on unnecessary time-consuming admin and speed up processes, without compromising on quality and morale.

In the current times, it is more important than ever to be agile and adaptable. Businesses need to be flexible to ever-changing work environments and able to collaborate from anywhere, all while keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and leveraging their team’s skills.

Choosing tools and software that meet your business needs is imperative to producing great work that is efficient and effective. Having the right tool for the job can streamline processes to make room for your team to thrive.

We’ll explore some of the most loved tools and softwares currently in-market to improve your brand compliance, content quality, team morale, operational efficiency and more.

Design Tools

These days, content is key. Whether you’re a small business or an established brand, everyone is distributing higher volumes of content than ever before. So much so, that it is now not only a graphic designer's job, but also a marketer's job to produce eye-catching graphics. This makes having an easy-to-use design tool more important than ever.

Our favourite is Canva. With Canva, beginner-level designers and marketers can create quick graphics using templates that make it easy to turn content ideas into professional designs.

Here are some features:

• Access to a library of photos, videos, and templates

• Access to editable icons, shapes, and stickers

• A library of fonts, and the ability to upload your own fonts (pro plan only)

• Drag-and-drop editor

• Photo animation

Digital Asset Management Software

Every established marketing team needs a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform. In a nutshell, the right DAM platform can keep your team on brand, on time and on budget.

Our pick for the best Digital Asset Management Software on offer is IntelligenceBank. Their online DAM makes sure that your digital assets are trackable, sharable and easy to create and find. Content management and compliance can be done much easier with the help of a great digital asset management like the one offered by IntelligenceBank.

Here are the highlight features:

• One secure location for everything from uploading, storing and managing assets

• Categorise content with AI tagging and custom metadata

• Built-in annotating

• Multiple version tracking and side-by-side comparison Built-in annotating

• Multiple format support

• Permission allocation

• Connect directly to your favourite platforms (Adobe, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, WordPress and more)

• Creative Templates

• Share large file links or directly embed media

Email Marketing

Email marketing has always been a great way to keep in touch with your customers, and it’s not slowing down any time soon. There are a lot of email marketing platforms available, so finding the right one can be tough, and requires having a good look at your business needs. Our suggestion for a mid-level email marketing platform is Mailchimp.

Here are some features we love:

• Drag and drop editor

• Pre-designed email templates

• Testing functionality

• Automation flows

• Audience segmentation

• Insights and analytics

Social Media Marketing

We all know social media marketing is a must these days. Almost all businesses should be committed to their social media presence. It might seem like fun and games but developing your brand on social media is no easy feat. It takes time and effort to ideate, create and schedule posts that are actually of value to your audience. So, finding a tool that can streamline all of the above is absolutely worth your while. Our favourite platform for this is Hootsuite.

Here are some highlight features:

• Post scheduling with calendar view

• Multi-channel posting

• Community engagement automation

• Audience and engagement insights

• Post recommendations

• Paid advertising across various platforms

Communication and Collaboration

With the need for flexible working arrangements being an absolute non-negotiable in our post-Covid world, finding effective ways to communicate while working remotely is incredibly important. Not only does effective communication improve productivity, but it also fosters a culture of connection. Slack has coined themselves as “your digital HQ”, and we can see why.

Here are some of their features:

• Instant direct messaging

• Group chat messaging or “channels”

• Video and voice call functionality

• Secure file sharing

• Various apps and integrations

Video Conferencing

These days, there are so many different options available for video conferencing, it can be hard to commit to one. There are plenty of free video conferencing apps on the market, but they won’t always meet your needs. Zoom is a well known tool for video conferencing with both free and paid plans available, and it is arguably the most popular. Here’s why:

• HD video and voice conferencing functionality

• Various apps and integrations

• Webinar hosting options

• Meeting recording with transcript recording available

• Visual effects such as backgrounds and “appearance touch-up”

• In-meeting chat functionality with file sharing

• Integrated with Google and Outlook for easy calendar scheduling

• Access meetings via phone with dial-in

• Breakout rooms

Customer Service

How you treat your customers Customer service can be a time-consuming task, but with the right tool you can cut your time down drastically while providing a more involved, personalised customer experience. Our best pick for the job is Zendesk.

Here’s what you can expect to see:

• Help desk automation

• Request forms and ticket fields from any source including Help centre request forms, emails, text chat, mobile phone, and from social media.

• Insights and analytics

• IT help desk

• Self-service portal

HR Software

Corporate culture is not just a trendy phrase, it’s an important contributing factor to the happiness, productivity and longevity of employees. Having the right tool to process administrative HR tasks as well as fostering a culture of connectivity can make all the difference. Employment Hero is a great solution.

Here are some of the features we love:

• Leave requests and approvals

• Wellness offerings

• Performance review platform

• Filing of important HR documents

• Feed for employee shout outs and recognitions

• Coaching and learning modules

• Pay slip access

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